Zeitgeist Goes For The Green With Manufactured Landscapes

Well, if you are going to sit down and watch a documentary about how the world is slowly going to hell in a hand basket, you might as well get to look at some pretty pictures along the way. It worked for Werner Herzog in his film Lessons Of Darkness about the Iraqi oil fires during Desert Storm, so it might work again with Manufactured Landscapes.

Variety announced that US distribution rights for the documentary film have been purchased by Zeitgeist Films. The film is directed by Jennifer Baichwal, and is about the environmental impact of the new industrial revolution in China. The film uses Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and his photographs of the construction of China's Three Gorges Dam project as a commentary on industrial pollution. This is Baichwal's second project with Zeitgeist Films; her first was about the author Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky). Burtynsky is an award-winning artist known for his large-scale photographs of landscapes that might appear beautiful, but are of some of the worst ecological danger zones -- and they are amazing photographs, inspiring competing feelings of admiration and horror.

Unlike a documentary like An Inconvenient Truth, which handles environmental subject matter in more conventionally informative way, Manufactured Landscapes is a little more abstract. The question is, will audiences still get the message?